We had a trade! And lucky for us, it involved a whopping ONE NHL player, which now makes it the biggest trade of the season, at least until the Leafs trade Leivo. Kudos to the NHL GMs who finally stopped being chickenshit enough to do their jobs, and in particular to John Chayka of the Coyotes, Flames GM Not Brian Burke.

The trade is as follows:

Kudos to the Coyotes for starting to sell. It only took being 15 points out of the playoffs.

As for the Flames... this was an important deal for them. Despite their top-end defence still being great, they need a capable guy on the back end to stabilize them as they push for the postseason. Stone is just that. The 26-year-old had a breakout year last year in terms of scoring, notching 36 points, nearly doubling his previous career high of 21. He has just 9 points in 45 games this year, but he’s probably just getting unlucky. If I know one thing, it’s that defencemen without much scoring record who explode in one year are a good bet to repeat that.

And even if he doesn’t, we all know scoring is a bad way to judge defensemen. We should really judge them on how well they effect over-

Oh dear. Well, HERO charts are kind of facile. Let’s see what kind of opinion respected hockey experts have on this deal.

Hmm... sorry, wrong one.

Dammit, I keep screwing this up.

Ugh, never mind. At least Calgary is only paying half his salary, due to the retention?

Well, that was mean, Rob. Anyways, I found the analytics expert who thinks the Flames made a great move!

Check and mate, nerds.

Of course, no one knows a team like their fans. If we truly want a good understanding of a how a trade will affect a team, that’s who we should ask. Let’s see how our resident Flames fan here at PPP is doing.

Oh. Better luck next time, Not Brian Burke!